A first-grade student died in a Philadelphia school whose nurse was not on duty because of budget cuts.
The child was given CPR and sent by ambulance to a hospital, where he died.
In a story by Daniel Denvir, nurse Amy Smigiel said:
“There is no net for the staff or the children,” she says. “There’s no requirement to have any kind of medical team. It’s my job as the nurse to make sure there’s an emergency plan, and basically it is 911…The equipment isn’t there, nothing is there for them.”
“Smigiel works at Jackson only on Thursdays and every other Friday. Until five years ago, Smigiel says that she was present at Jackson every single day. Smigiel says that she has worked at Jackson for 12 years, and worked for 15 years prior in an emergency room…..
“Philadelphia public schools have long lacked necessary funding, but recent cuts by Gov. Tom Corbett have sent the District into an increasingly dire fiscal crises. As of last fall, there were 179 nurses working in public, private and parochial schools, down from 289 in 2011. In September, sixth-grader Laporshia Massey died of what her father described as an asthma attack after falling sick while no nurse was on duty at Bryant Elementary School. The death caused an outcry against school budget cuts, and Corbett soon released $45 million for the District that had been withheld on the condition of teachers union concessions. Corbett denied that the funding was related to Massey’s death.”
How many more children will die before the Governor and the Legislature are held accountable? Who will press criminal charges against those who endanger the lives of children? Isn’t that what accountability is all about? The officials with the power to safeguard the lives of these children abandoned them. Surely the preservation of lives is more important than test scores and budget savings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I taught in Philly and from what I know, the money given by Corbett, did not go for extra nurses. (I could be wrong). Is there someone out there who knows? This guy cannot be allowed to stay in office.
None of the $45 million went for nurses. Parents United filed hundreds of complaints with the state. It was through those complaints that a few nurses were restored to some schools.
They’re getting away with murder in Philadelphia…..
No, by God, they are not going to away with this.
this
Sad thing about this Judy. People will continue to vote the life-long politicians into office and not vote in a way that is in the beat interest of our most precious resource…children.
“. . . most precious resource…children.”
NO!
Children are not a “most precious resource”. That is edudeformer language that demeans the most innocent of society, the children. Being a “resource” means being used. Should one human “use” another human (no matter what age) without complete consent and complete knowledge of what that “usage” entails????
Agree.
It was a dark day for the 99%, when “human resource departments” replaced “personnel departments”.
Professionals in the field, should demand an end to nomenclature that devalues and dehumanizes people.
How many ways are there to extort union concessions? Cut the nurses and let at least one child die. Then blame the union? Unnecessary. Tom Corbett is an extortionist and killer, and he was aided by a bunch of other people.
A child dies in school because of an asthma attack? Have we become a Third World country in one of our largest cities? I used to work as a teacher in Philadelphia 10 years ago and this comes as no surprise to me.
Can you say “lawsuit?”
Can you say “swept under the rug, gag-order settlement with no systemic changes”?
Silly me, I forgot the “no admission of wrong-doing” part.
It looks like the city of Philadelphia will demand an accounting, until they get one. Helen Gym isn’t getting any sleep, search for her twitter if you aren’t following her yet.
Here is a blog with more details. Note the internal contradiction in this statement by Karyn Lynch, deputy for student services:
Asked whether having a nurse in the building would have made a difference in the child’s death, Gallard said: “that’s a very difficult question to answer, not knowing what occurred. We’re not medical experts. There were trained personnel with CPR certification.”
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/Student-dies-at-city-school.html#cBrDQV0FsCHqd74j.99
It fills me with grief and horror that they’re laying off nurses, shrugging “we’re not medical experts”, and then cynically pretending teachers can just take CPR training to fill the gap. You think, “if only we could go back and change it for that one moment…” God forbid the rich should pay any taxes to keep the kids safer.
But there is always money for more testing.
And our country just spent SIX TRILLION DOLLARS, mostly on no-bid contracts, to conduct phoney wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let me illustrate how large that number is. A million seconds is about 11.5 days. A trillion seconds is 31,688.8 years. Six trillion seconds is 190,133 years.
We spent as many dollars on those phoney wars as there are seconds in 190,133 years.
But we can’t afford nurses at home to keep our little children from dying.
And there is always more money for more tests and more computers to take tests on and more data systems to deliver reports on the tests and more conferences at resorts hosted by testing companies and computer moguls for governors and state department officials to attend.
Bob Shepherd: let me put it another way.
According to the self-styled “education reformers” the very existence of the USofA—especially as regards the economy and national security—rest squarely on public education.
So if six trillion dollars was/is available for foreseeable disasters like Iraq and Afghanistan then we should be able to cough up more than spare change for nurses for children.
You’d think, wouldn’t you? Strangely[?], the money for the two wars was/is easy to find, while that for an adequate numbers of nurses just doesn’t seem to exist.
What times we live in…
😎
A friend of mine sent me, a few months ago, a copy of Army Times, which is an official Army magazine. The COVER STORY posed this question: “Ten years on, why are we over here, and why were we ever over here?”
And the answer was, “Who the hell knows.”
I’m not kidding.
When Obama goes golfing, he does so with his buddy Jeffrey Imelt, president of the largest defense supplier in the world, General Electric.
The sphere of power is a very, very small one. You can get the ones with real power in a room and decide that there is going to be a war or that there is going to be a single set of “standards” and new tests for the entire country. Around the blessed circle there is a slightly larger ring of wannabes and toadies and windup toys. And then there’s everyone else. Those people, as Romney called them. The 99.9999 percent.
sp: Immelt
and his position at GE is Chairman of the Board and CEO
“But there is always money for more testing.”
And for more death and destruction that is the War Department, oops I mean the Department of Defense (sic).
Disgusting ain’t it!
But, hey, there is plenty of money for testing
and data systems
and computers to take tests on
because, you see, there’s this problem in education. We just haven’t gotten tough enough with those teachers and those kids. That’s why they are so ungritful.
“. . . they are so ungritful.”
TAGO!
this is where most of us would cry. but crying does nothing to stop this issue. only actions can
This is a tragedy. It’s surprising how much health office staffing practices vary.
I started my career in upstate NY where all our schools had at least one nurse, the high school (our largest school) had two nurses, and our larger elementary schools and middle school had nursing assistants. One elementary school with a special ed concentration had two nurses and an assistant (one nurse located in the special ed wing).
My current district in the upper midwest has two nurses for six schools, similar in size to the NY district. Each school has a nursing assistant. Also, Wisconsin requires training for all educators on medication, including emergency medications and EpiPens.
In both states, schools had emergency response team that included staff with CPR certification and, if available, other responder certifications. Ideally, there would be a national standard for a nurse in every school. That would allow the nurse to focus on the medical needs and the educators to focus on instruction. But if districts don’t place a nurse in every school, they need to provide training and plans for school staff so that students aren’t at risk. All staff training is a good idea even with nurse staffing because medical emergencies can happen on field trips and the teacher may need to be a responder as the nurse is back in the school.
It sounds like Philadelphia may have reduced nurses without making the necessary emergency plans and training available to the school staff. Not good.
Utah, which I believe has the smallest number of school nurses per student in the nation, has one nurse for every six thousand students. In my district, we have one nurse for all of the secondary schools in half of the district (five high schools and eight junior highs). I have met the nurse once, when she came to teach us all how to use the AED and epi-pens.
The PARCC website says that there are 15 million public school kids in the PARCC states. So, under this contract, at $24 a kid–what Pearson is to be paid–that’s $360 million a year.
So, how much is that in terms of opportunity cost?
Well, that much money would pay 9,812 beginning teacher’s salaries EVERY YEAR.
It would buy 437,500 high-end laptop computers or 1.67 million high-end computer tablets for poor kids EVERY YEAR.
It would buy 5 million new basal textbooks EVERY YEAR.
It would buy 29.167 million library books EVERY YEAR.
Over three years, Pearson’s take on the PARCC tests alone will be more than a billion dollars.
Any wonder, now, why Pearson heavily supported the CCSSO and went into partnership with Bill Gates? And that’s just the beginning of the Cash Cow that Common Core will be for Pearson.
The Cash Cow Common Core College and Career Ready Assessment Program.
Holy C.C.C.C.C.C.R.A,P.
That’s one test.
Middle school kids in Pennsylvania take 20 standardized tests per year.
I have no idea how many elementary school kids take, but it’s probably in the same ballpark.
I wish some accountant would figure the ACTUAL COSTS of all this testing (not the phoney figures put forward by shill organizations like the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation).
I’m pretty sure that if you got rid of all those tests
EDUCATION WOULD IMPROVE
and
You could afford to hire a nurse.
So that little children don’t die.
Let me guess — the child who died wasn’t White.
It’s not how many children have to die before things change, it’s how long before a middle class White child dies. Then, things will change.
They’ll change even faster if she’s a photogenic blonde girl. So fast, your head will spin.
The billionaire money could fund nurses, teaching assistants, healthy lunches, extra curricular enrichment. But no, it funds the destruction of public schools, and the hiring of officers in charge of witch-hunting the teachers so they can be fired. Google how many districts have received RTTT monies, and how much they got, and by comparison how many cuts were made and what the budget and ultimately the RTTT monies were spent on. Shocking.
Powerful. And PARCC is not the only sinkhole. There is SMARTER with similar costs in the other states. Costs are about the same for tests in both consortia, and of the quotes never include the tech upgrades needed. The economists and statisticians that could crunch these numbers from solid data are too busy and indifferent to run the numbers.
A formal GAO accounting of public dollars invested in tests should be on the docket, or offered by experts that have not been co-opted by Fordham, Brookings, Gates, etc.
That one contract is just a drop in black hole of cost that is standardized testing in the United States.
The AFT report “Testing More, Teaching Less” put standardized testing costs in the US at between $700 and $1,000 per pupil.
Let’s take the lower of these figures. According to the Institute for Education Statistics, average school size in the US in 2009-10 was 546.4.
So, $382,480 was spent on standardized testing and tested-related costs PER SCHOOL.
Well, $382,480 would pay for an entire medical team, including a doctor, in every school.
When the opportunity costs of standardized testing include CHILDREN DYING, those costs are TOO HIGH.
Click to access testingmore2013.pdf
Indeed to all of the above. Too, how many children die psychologically, emotionally and die to the love of learning because of the ignorance, stupidity, cupidity – whatever – of these legislators who are killing the teaching profession. Teachers, children are mere widgets in their meat grinder. Children are to be workers in the great corporate agenda which is killing our democracy, our humanity et al.